Follow Me Down

by Gordon MacKinney

  “Shut up, Lucas,” Tricia replied.

  Gorilla Two reached down, wrapped his meaty paws around my neck, and yanked me to my feet.

  “Okay, okay,” I pleaded with hands held aloft, promising to toe the line. I resumed my lead, wracking my brain to recall our training session. Tricia had learned about heavier-than-air stink damp and how it settles in low spots like an invisible pond. How the copper coins gave a last-ditch warning. How the sulfurous stench falsely vanished as the toxins destroyed sense of smell. How the next thing to fail was clear thinking, and how the dead air of the sealed subway produced more powerful buildups than Calcutta’s rankest sewer. We’d told her how our first expedition had retreated with moments to spare.

  But had we told her where? My heart sank. Even if we had, the dizzying maze of featureless tunnels gave few navigational clues. Unaware, she would usher the intruder into her lungs.

  A cone of glow from Gorilla Two’s flashlight shot ahead and landed on a small, familiar pile: the lanyard and discolored penny we’d left behind weeks earlier before our hasty retreat. We approached the shoreline of a toxic pool. No time to pause for reflection and slow the column’s momentum. I filled my lungs to near bursting, held my breath, and strode forward without hesitation because there could be no turning back.

  I felt a strange resignation, impossibly at peace with our impossible situation. But no, this was chemistry eroding my judgment. Amazing! Even on the pool’s periphery, the air contained hints of mind-altering poison. I shook off my euphoria and focused on each forward step.

  “Who farted?” Gorilla Two said, and I wanted to laugh at such inauspicious words from the mute ox, but dared not risk an inhale. I spun to survey the column of followers. Reuben was tight-lipped and alert, having read the markings all along, his lungs also filled to capacity.

  Gorilla Two’s head bobbled off plumb and his eyes rolled to white. He settled to his knees as if readying for Sunday prayer. “Make do, make do,” he recited to an absent listener, “and we will too.” His hand relaxed and the flashlight tumbled. I snatched it up and spotlighted the rear of our column. There, the fates of Valentine, Tricia, and Tony rested on the random cadence of individual breathing.

  “Trix, your penny,” I cried out and fought the instinct to replace my expelled breath. The stench of rotten eggs teased my nostrils. My eyes watered. Fifties doo-wop music played from a nook in my brain.

  Tricia fumbled at her chest and lifted the coin before widening eyes. She understood, but soon enough? To her left, Tony’s legs wobbled at the knees. His expression blossomed as if witnessing the eighth wonder of the world. He raised a childlike gaze to the ceiling, searching for answers.

  I charged toward them.

  Forehead creased with fury, Valentine hollered, “What the—” before his speech decomposed to a dry gargle.

  Tricia angled her head to locate me behind the glare from the bouncing flashlight. Her eyes lost their focus, balance failed. She tipped against Tony. They both collapsed at Valentine’s feet in a dusty pile of limbs and denim.

  The ex-soldier dropped to one knee and I feared some kind of classic combat maneuver. But his rutted face swirled with the same trippy befuddlement.

  Two things had to happen fast and simultaneously. I glanced sideways at Reuben, also in motion, his face red with exertion and pleading lungs. “I’ll drag her clear,” I said and fended off another urge to inhale. “Get the weapons.” Only seconds of oxygen remained.

  I looked ahead. Valentine, his face now contorted with rage, swung his arm in a wide arc until the knife blade creased the skin below Tricia’s jaw line. Her eyes flared wide with shock and horror.

  I gasped, a deadly mistake.

  Time slowed. The melody from an old Drifters record pierced my thoughts. My leg muscles liquefied. I tasted vinegar. I toppled forward and rolled, first to my shoulder and then onto my back. I peered skyward into black.

  At night the stars put on a show for free.

  I thanked small blessings, that Tricia’s nightmare would end mercifully fast once blood stopped flowing to her brain.

  And darling you can share it all with me.

  The violin section swelled and Tricia’s scream reverberated in our concrete wilderness but then ended abruptly as if lifting the needle from a record.

  CHAPTER 28

  Hardness beneath my back. Scratchy fingertips held to my wrist, on my neck. Letting go. Smoother hands on my cheeks, pressing and testing. Letting go.

  Later, muffled voices. An angry question, a resolute reply. Damped footsteps. Scraping. Lid unscrewing from a metal canteen. Wet, easy slaps to my face with soft hands.

  Light beyond eyelids, then images. Tricia and lines of worry on pretty skin, dark hair pulled back, the usual deviant locks arcing down to dance before bottomless brown eyes.

  Her voice. “You in there?”

  “You’re alive,” I heard myself say, sounding raw and metallic.

  She smiled with her lips closed before flashing a pretend frown. “Bitch?”

  I felt a rush of relief but she couldn’t possibly notice, my face as flaccid as the rest of my body.

  Reuben appeared too, his left eye socket and cheekbone rosy and bruised. I peered over his shoulder to a narrow line of light tracing the wall of the tunnel to the curved ceiling. I lay on the floor, face up, my head against one backpack, my feet elevated by another—classic Reuben medic protocol for an ailing explorer. He always knew his stuff. He squatted to one side, the knees of his jeans caked with dirt. Tricia knelt to the other side, hands draped on her thighs. Memory rushed back. Stink damp and a desperate scramble. “You’re okay.” I exhaled.

  “Yeah.” Her eyes twinkled with hidden happiness.

  I reexamined Reuben’s shiner. “You’re attractive.”

  “I got Valentine’s knife and dragged you two clear,” he said. “The big guy started puking so I pulled him out next.”

  “Should’ve left him in the stink,” Tricia muttered.

  Reuben shot her a rebuke. “That’s not how we do things.”

  “I was kidding.”

  I had my doubts.

  Reuben shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Valentine was next because he was lying across Tony, but half of him sort of woke up—”

  “Half?” I said.

  “The pissed off half.” Reuben caressed his cheekbone. “He jumped up, slugged me pretty good, puffed up his chest with a big breath, and timber.” He demonstrated with a toppling forearm. “They’re both tied up against the wall”—he doubled the volume of his voice—“probably scraping at their ropes, but we’ll redo them before they make any progress.”

  “Fuck you,” came Valentine’s reply.

  I allowed myself a moment of silent celebration at Valentine’s disgrace, his entire strike force dismantled by a habitual student, a shop clerk, and an insurance actuary. “What about Tony?”

  Tricia and Reuben exchanged knowing glances.

  “I got to him last, and only after dealing with Valentine,” Reuben explained, “so he breathed more of it than anyone else. He’s not looking so good.”

  I heaved myself up on one elbow. My friends tugged my shoulders until I sat cross-legged. My head felt cleaved down the middle.

  Reuben had perched a flashlight on its end, casting the scene in a hazy glow. The air danced with particles raised during the battle. Bound at ankles and wrists, Valentine and Gorilla Two stared silently from across the tunnel. The big man appeared to accept his circumstances as another shift on the clock. Valentine seethed like a soaked cat.

  I rubbed my temples, blinked away the fog, and sought out Tricia’s gaze. “V
alentine had his knife at your throat. You screamed.”

  “That’s what Reuben told me,” she replied, her voice unsteady. “I don’t remember it.” I read in her expression a mixture of awe and terror, perhaps reserved for those who get to peer into the precipice, turn on their heels, and walk back home.

  “I saw it all happen as I was running toward them,” Reuben said, now somber. “Tony held the knife away until Valentine passed out.”

  . . . . .

  We prepared for our exodus. After my exposure, I didn’t feel entirely present, more like a distant observer, so Reuben wisely assigned me the easiest task of stowing gear.

  I hypothesized that a return to normalcy—consciousness, movement, breathing—could overrule the effects of the toxins, but they lingered like the acrid odor of smoke long after a house fire.

  Reuben checked on Tony. The heir to the Drax fortune lay flat on his back, head propped on a rolled-up sweatshirt. He remained unconscious and, according to Reuben, exhibited a weak pulse, sluggish pupil dilation, and rapid breathing. I didn’t fully understand the implications, but the furrow in Reuben’s brow told me plenty.

  Next, Reuben double-checked our prisoners’ bindings while Tricia guarded from a healthy distance. She may not have known much about guns, but her stance said otherwise, with her legs spread and arms extended, sighting down the barrel at Valentine’s temple.

  We approached a decision point. Gear stowed, I knelt alongside Tony as if my own investigation might reveal a course of action. His face and lips were the color of grade school paste. I thumbed up an eyelid. The pupil danced left and right before rolling out of view. To my astonishment, his legs lurched and elongated, fingers flexed and jaw clenched. For a moment, I thought my probing had triggered something, but then I realized: he was having a seizure. I rolled him to his side to prevent choking.

  The episode ended a minute later. Reuben ushered our trio into a crouch out of earshot.

  “Listen good,” he said. “Hydrogen sulfide poisoning has a tipping point. Stay on the safe side of it and the body fights back. But go beyond and… well, things get worse.”

  “How much worse?” Tricia asked, but I knew the answer.

  Reuben braced himself. “He’ll die without treatment.”

  Hope vented like air from a balloon, but Tricia defied our change in fortunes. “How can you be so sure?”

  “I already suspected because he’s neurologic—eyes all goofy—but I hoped he’d turn the corner,” Reuben said. “The seizure proved he won’t.”

  I wrung my hands, now pewter with accumulated grime. “The minute we clear Alpha Portal, we’ll drop a dime and send help.”

  Reuben gave a single, definitive shake of the head. “Too many time-consuming steps. Laminar necrosis has begun, meaning death of cells in the cerebral cortex. The process can be stopped with an injection of sodium nitrite, but it has to happen fast.”

  I let my butt rock back to the concrete and wrapped my arms around my knees. In the days before our infiltration, I’d imagined every possible complication, and how to survive. But I’d never imagined our tiny crew of amateurs responsible for any lives but our own. I had led Valentine’s party into a toxic trap, a decision I’d probably re-examine forever. But far more vexing for the moment, the immediate decision would determine the life or death of another human being.

  “Screw this,” Tricia blurted. “This is their problem. Valentine and Lunchmeat can rescue Tony, and we can get out of here.”

  “What?” Reuben countered. “We leave them tied up and hope they wriggle free in time?”

  Tricia eased up long enough to consider this conundrum. “We toss them the knife and make a break for Alpha Portal. If they follow us, Tony dies.”

  Reuben shook his head. “You’re dreaming. Valentine’s so angry he’d gladly sacrifice his boss to burn our asses.”

  “Then we shoot him in the leg,” Tricia said.

  Reuben pressed on. “Can we please have a constructive suggestion?”

  We were debating in circles. I had to try something. “We pass close to Drax HQ on the way to Alpha Portal.”

  “You mean we drop off Tony?” Tricia asked.

  “He dies if we leave him here,” Reuben said.

  “We’ve established that,” she said with a huff. “Ever carry a hundred eighty pounds of meat for three miles?”

  Had she forgotten Tony saved her life by pushing away Valentine’s blade?

  Reuben said, “We can rig a stretcher.”

  Tricia held firm. “Ever carry ninety pounds of meat for three miles?”

  “Now you’re being difficult,” Reuben said.

  The bickering wasn’t helping, and we paid a price for every passing second. “Valentine’s the lunatic,” I said, “so we leave him tied up and force the big guy to carry.”

  Tricia received this with a raised eyebrow. Reuben less so, perhaps considering my lame track record. I continued. “There’s a service passage a few hundred feet before the Drax portal. That’s where we part ways. The big guy has to fetch help—what choice does he have? We take off. The service passage crosses over to Adolphus. Three turns and twenty minutes later we’re at Alpha Portal—” I almost said and home free but held off.

  Reuben gnawed his lip before saying, “Let’s do it.”

  . . . . .

  We jerry-rigged a stretcher from the last of our rope, a sheet of plywood, and two lengths of pipe abandoned by the gas company.

  As Valentine simmered nearby, we told Gorilla Two about his role in saving Tony. We included the caveat that his cooperation, or lack thereof, would be judged at gunpoint. He accepted our tutelage nonchalantly, as if recruited to help move a sofa.

  Valentine spoke to his musclebound associate. “You help them and you’re a traitor.”

  Gorilla Two shrugged it off. “I’m helping Mr. Drax, not them.”

  Perfect response, midpoint in the DMZ between Valentine and us. Was he performing? Would he turn on us at first opportunity? I thought not, detecting neither the inclination nor capacity for bullshit.

  We got underway. Reuben took first shift at the rear of the stretcher to monitor Tony’s health. The big man lugged up front where we could monitor him. He had to be six foot five, but he lost a couple of inches to slumping shoulders, as if he were much older. His haircut looked do-it-yourself.

  My curiosity kicked in. “Been working for Drax long?”

  “Couple years.”

  “Like it?”

  “It’s a paycheck.”

  “Know much about Drax? I mean… what they do?”

  The man glanced like I had a screw loose. “They build buildings.”

  Yeah, that’s what they did, along with a lot of hurting. But why should he need to know? It’s a paycheck.

  A recurring fear bubbled into my consciousness. What if once Cincinnati learned of Drax’s crimes, no one cared enough to upset decades of tradition? After all, with Vietnam photos dominating magazine covers with green foliage and crimson blood, World War II in black and white seemed from another era, someone else’s era, someone else’s problem.

  “What about before Drax?” I asked the man, relieving Reuben on stretcher duty.

  Another you’re-crazy glance. “What’s it to you?”

  “Just making conversation.”

  Now Tricia sized me up like I was nuts.

  Gorilla Two said, “Drove truck and repossessed appliances for Save-On up in Hamilton.”

  That fit. About my age, he must’ve been a local boy, went to Queen City High for all I knew, one of those guys who’d no more speak in class than dan
ce the Merengue. Maybe he tried out for defensive linebacker and even played a few evening games under misty lights, dreaming for a break that wouldn’t come. And now, his sprout of ambition stomped to a shriveled stem, he followed orders without asking why because the answer wouldn’t change anything.

  The hopelessness of it all. My mind must’ve wandered into a dark place because what happened next struck like lightning from a clear nighttime sky.

  Just shy of the final intersection before passing below Drax headquarters, a voice said, “Now,” and ten or more men switched on flashlights and materialized from behind columns and shadowed entryways. One man wordlessly relieved me of my stretcher poles. Another, stinking of smokes, brought his stubbled face too close to mine. “Lucas Tremaine?”

  A dozen comebacks failed me. “Yes,” I replied.

  “Rudolph Drax would like a word with you.”

  CHAPTER 29

  “Now what?” Tricia said, sitting beside me and sounding more irritated than scared.

  Reuben, his face in shadows, fingered the brass trim on the arms of the leather chair, the massive boardroom tabletop before him. “No choice but to wait. I counted seven guards in the hall.”

  Rudolph Drax was en route, according to the only thug authorized to speak to us, and he’d refused to answer more questions. When Reuben had tried to describe Tony’s affliction, the guard shut him down with a brandish of his pistol.

  The carpet and upholstery were as plush as I remembered, but in the darkness of the wee hours, the Drax Museum looked nothing like the place I’d visited one bright afternoon. No Cincinnatians strolled among the models, marveling at Drax achievement. No miniature streetlamps or windows glowed with welcoming amber. No tall replicas cast shadows on phony avenues from phony overhead suns.

  The indoor expanse was barely lit by a few track lights, their weak rays harsh and specific, leaving most displays shrouded. Unlike the subway’s intriguing darkness, this murk wanted us gone. The deserted buildings and streets exuded a quiet menace, as if I might blink and find myself shrunk, plasticized, and imprisoned within balsawood walls.